The Mindful Meditative Mind – Mastering The Art Of No Reaction

Mindfulness meditation is about opening up the mind to whatever is present and seeing things as they are without judgment. It means acceptance of negative and positive, remaining still and silent even through difficult postures and noisy environments. It’s training yourself to let go and just experience. The discipline of sitting in difficult postures helps in attaining non attachment. Experienced meditators sit and remain still even when they feel pain. Mastering difficult postures should not be rushed as this can cause injury. When there is attachment to comfort or pain, feelings fluctuate with whatever arises. One who is always fluctuating emotionally because of environment will find life hard.

In pure awareness or mindfulness there is observation of things without opinion.

The art of no reaction is difficult to master because people are programmed to react physically or mentally to everything around them. Reactions can be positive or negative. Most people are always thinking, happy, sad, angry. The art of no reaction is rare.

Commitment to mindfulness meditation can help one to reach the state of no reaction. After a while of practice most beginners usually experience small bursts of clarity during their sessions that can last anywhere from one to three minutes. After that they return to struggling with thoughts. As you learn to gently return to your awareness moments of clarity increase and the struggle to control thoughts become less. In time your entire session can be pure awareness.

There is no rush to master the art of no reaction because rushing causes worry which creates over thinking – the very thing you want to avoid. Instead relax and open up to everything that is there.

The ability to not react is useful in daily life. Not reacting allows more observation, a vital asset in any profession. This ability also allows you to keep your composure around individuals with negative attitudes. You can find yourself in a position where it is not possible to avoid these individuals. They could be people at work or school. Until you remove yourself from the situation you have to cooperate with them.

Over-thinking has a negative impact on health and is a major problem in the world. Over-thinking leads to assumption and can cause the mind to travel to problematic places and get stuck. An example of over-thinking is not being greeted by co-worker who usually smiles and wishes you good day. Because you’re accustomed to smiles and greetings from that person it can send your mind wandering in a wonder of negative thoughts.

“She always says good morning. What did I do wrong?”
“Am I badly dressed?”
“Why did she look so angry?”
“She must have been offended by what I said in the meeting yesterday.”
“Maybe she’s having problems with her husband.”

Daily encounters like this have lead many on an over-thinking spree and caused their entire day to be downbeat.

With the art of no reaction you can use your power of discernment and choose what to think about.

Not reacting also circumvents conflict and lessens the stress of criticism. Not all criticisms are worth responding to. Sometimes your reaction will fuel the fire. The more mindful and non reactive we become the stronger our intuition gets. Intuition will warn us when to respond and when not to.

In some cases it takes more strength not to respond.

Thinking and analyzing are very important. However constant over-thinking and reacting to trivial things leaves less energy to think about the things that are actually important. If we only thought about what was important we would have a lot more energy and be much healthier. This is possible with practice.